Slayers Don't Pay for Drinks In Cleveland
by Yllen
Summary: Wishverse AU/Supernatural crossover. Dean Winchester never should have come to Cleveland. Vampires are the least of his problems in the city where the Slayer's word is law. Especially if Faith is that slayer. Faith/Dean.


**Slayers Don't Pay for Drinks (in Cleveland)**

"World is what it is. We fight. We die. Wishing doesn't change that."

"I have to believe in a better world."

"Go ahead. I have to live in this one."

(Buffy, season III)

Ending up in her territory is reason enough to be scared, or at least seriously worried, so Dean Winchester obviously postures. Heaven forbid that he drops his famous poker face and shows that he gives a damn, and yes, underneath it all he is kicking himself and asking what in the godforsaken world came over him to cross the border.

Okay, so maybe it had something to do with wanting to piss Sam off, trying to impress a chick and, last not least, looking for a new story to brag about in front of other hunters.

And you know, this is a _fucking Hellmouth_. He needs to see it before he dies, right? Preferably a long time before he dies rather than right before, but still.

He drives slowly, hoping that the Slayer has no idea about his arrival yet. He can't really count on it, though – there's been a lot of talk about her having Wicca girls reporting back to her about almost everything that goes on in Cleveland, and hunters is just the thing she might ask about. She's rather famous for her violent dislike of them (and the violent is literal here) ever since that poor bastard Gordon Walker gave her a scar across her face.

Then she ripped his intestines out, or so they say.

His license plates make him stand out, he realizes. He should have had them changed for some local ones before crossing. He'll draw undue attention to himself and get killed heroically, and this will not piss Sam off, this will make him so furious he'll probably go and dig Dean up and kill him the second time.

Or do something even more stupid.

He drives next to a night club with an alley at the back, obviously modelled after the Bronze – in Cleveland it must be some sort of an extreme sport, frequenting that sort of a place; if you're human, there'd be vamps out to get you, if you're vampire, the slayer is kind of likely to show up. Everyone's sentimental, see?

He bets the drinks here are damn expensive.

He chooses a smaller establishment, filled with smoke and unsavoury, but mostly human clientele. He orders a beer and oh, he hasn't realized how thirsty he is until now.

"Would you mind if I join you?" a petite blonde asks him. She's in her thirties, but obviously in great shape, and her eyes are full of ill-concealed mirth. He wonders how much she's had to drink. He doesn't much care.

"That depends. Will you tell me your name?" he replies, smiling. She props herself up on a stool. Her legs, clad in tight denim, look amazing. He has to force himself to look up. Not this kind of up, at her face.

"I'm Darla."

------

It's anniversary of Buffy's death, and Faith's out on the prowl. She's going to kill a couple extra of them tonight – she does on each of their anniversaries, Kendra's and Nikki's and any other she remembers. So many names.

But B was… special. They were friends before B was chosen, and for a short time afterwards. Faith wasn't all that great at hiding her envy and Buffy liked that better than some of the girls who pretended not to mind, so as to gather favour with her.

They had a lot in common besides. A tendency to bend the rules that their Watchers so abhorred. Absentee fathers and dead mothers. Plus, they were both smoking hot, far hotter than any other potential in their group. They used to escape from the dorm at night and go clubbing together, and sometimes they would play pretend girlfriends to bother guys. Sometimes they would get caught in the moment.

No one kisses like Summers did. Faith sometimes dreams about that drunken fuck they never had.

A year ago, her death in Sunnydale made Faith the Slayer. Half a year ago, the government used an atomic bomb on the Californian town crawling with vamps. Faith watched it on the TV screen. It didn't make all that much of an impression.

All this is reason enough to go beyond and above her usual quota of three to five vamps per night. She wants to slay, and fuck, and maybe dance tonight. She needs to clear her head and then muddle it with alcohol.

She needs a new pair of leather trousers, 'cause she's bored with the red ones.

Let one of Quentin's cronies try and find her if they need her. She leaves her mobile on the nightstand.

------

The chick is good at this. She sips her drink and laughs at his jokes, and her cool fingers do a little dance on his palm.

"Why don't you tell me something about yourself?" he asks.

"There's not all that much to tell. I'm only staying in Cleveland for a couple of days with a good friend. You'd like her, I'm sure. I'm pretty much single after the asshole I was with suddenly decided he had other goals in life, and yes, that's a fancy way of saying he screwed me over."

Dean nods. Darla puts her hand on his thigh. Blood pounds in his ears.

"Come to think of it, I'm tired of talking. Why don't we take it somewhere more… private?"

Dean nods again. Words, they don't come easy.

They exit the pub, and Dean's gun is at the ready. She turns into game face. How nice to finally drop all the pretence.

"You thought I wouldn't spot a dead girl if she gropes me?"

"Not really. I just thought you wouldn't know what to do with the two of us."

------

She likes to do it the old-fashioned way – you spot one, you dance with it, then there's penetration of the deadly kind, and you try not to get the dust all over your shoes.

The memory of her Watcher patiently explaining to her that dance is not literal here brings a smile on her face. They are still scared shitless she'll follow in Buffy's footsteps and fuck a _bloodsucking fiend_.

Sometimes she wonders what happened to B's boy-toy after her death. The Council claimed he'd broken out of the cell they closed him in the moment they knew B no longer could oppose them.

If she were to bet, she'd say his cell had eastern exposure and pretty thick bars, and that they sent someone to dust it afterwards, without second thought.

Faith starts out slow. She circles her prey, stake in hand, slightly hunched shoulders, all her senses focused on this single moment; and then she strikes. She can hear the blood pumping inside her. He can too.

She loves this part. She loves all the parts. She's faster and stronger, and she wants to win more than he does. She almost feels sorry for the sucker, because frankly, he never stood a chance.

It's silent, and violent, and by the time she stakes the vamp, she's hardly broken a sweat.

She leaves and finds two others. Then another one. Then she stops counting.

------

Dean sees the other vampire emerge from the shadow into the flickering light of the streetlamp. She's dark-haired, her thin lips are pursed, and she walks as though she was hearing some music he has no idea of. She's yet to put on game face.

"He's so pretty. Like a puppy."

"You like puppies, don't you, Dru?"

"They are noisy. I have to make them quiet."

Simultaneously he shoots Darla and throws a bottle of holy water at the dark-haired chick. It bounces off of her and shatters on the ground, and her shriek pierces the air, even though the water doesn't touch her at all.

_Great aim, Dean._

He runs.

------

A girl walks into a bar. People stand up. A young pale boy races for the other door and she throws a stake at him from thirty feet away and gets the heart. He crumbles into dust.

Would be a shame if he weren't a vampire. Her Watcher would scold her.

The bartender sends a whisky her way, and when she takes a mingled pack of fags out of the pocket of her jacket, a dozen men and three or four women are ready to light her cigarette for her.

She inhales slowly, the smoke fills her lungs, and she catches her own reflection in a mirror – huge dark eyes, smudged kohl, red lipstick, a scar running across her face (B had one, too) and gods, she is just a little bit gay for herself.

"Should be here, B. Quite a ride," she mutters to herself.

------

There's being in shape, and there's vampire speed. Head start can only get you as far as a couple of blocks, and all you can do is hope to heaven someone will let you inside their house and for Heaven's sake, this is Cleveland. At night most citizens stay in and don't look out of the window if they hear screams because shrinks cost money.

He looks behind. They aren't in much of a hurry. They maintain a steady distance.

Maybe they're wary of him.

Yeah, and maybe Dad will let him drive his Impala any day now.

------

She hears something despite the four drinks she downs one after another (on the house), and the song played fucking loud about the night belonging to lovers. That's a fancy way to refer to demons.

Footsteps, a chase, outside. It must be those Wicca girls experimenting again, and she'll have a word with them. Amy in particular. She doesn't like anyone meddling with her head.

The sounds in her head get louder.

"Alright, alright, if it's so important…"

She finishes her drink in one huge swallow, the crowd parts before her, she gives her hips some extra sway, let them watch what they won't have, after all. Not now at least. Her reign won't be long, she knows – she's been here for almost a year already, and that's a lot when it comes to a Slayer's life expectancy. Sooner or later you run out of luck, so it's important to get as lucky as you can while you still can.

She isn't big on regret.

There's a stand-off in front of the bar. Two vamps and what looks like another fucking hunter, and for a second there she's almost ready to let the chicks have their fill of him, but she'll be damned if she lets a vampire from the Order of Aurelius walk away tonight of all nights, and pictures of the members of Master's family are embedded in her memory.

That, and the hunter looks real good.

They'll never know what hit them.

------

The sight of the Slayer is almost worth dying for.

She's fast as lightning, and it's clichéd to talk about fighting as dance, but she's the dancing and fighting cliché personified. She so graceful that it takes him a full fifteen seconds to tear his eyes away, load his gun with bullets blessed by a priest and take aim.

"You should see me when I'm sober," the Slayer shouts at him, in the middle of a kick.

Suddenly she has a stake in hand (he never saw her take it out, and he has no idea where she could have been hiding it) and Darla disappears with a final shriek, while Drusilla takes off.

He's out of breath, and he was as much help as a lamppost.

"Shouldn't you, like, chase her or something?"

"It's complicated. She's an ex… of an ex… of an old flame of mine," she pants out, clutching her chest. "That, and I'm bleeding out."

He only notices it now. Thank goodness for having experience with simultaneous dialling and applying pressure to wounds. Sometime his own.

The Slayer looks up at him. He remembers that her name is Faith.

"Is this… the right moment to try and cop a feel?"

That's when he realizes something. Maths was never his strongest point.

"An ex of an ex of an old flame of yours? That means there was some chick on chick action here, right?"

------

He's a pretty decent guy for a hunter, even if just as lame a fighter as the last two she had here, she decides early in the morning, when she's almost good as new, thanks to Slayer healing combined with some mojo. He's still asleep in an armchair, his neck craned at an angle that will make it really painful in a moment. He's taken his shoes and socks off.

She wakes him up with a punch.

"My Watcher tells me you're some Winchester guy. This means nothing to me."

He jumps up and attempts to hit her back. She giggles.

"Fool me once, fool me twice. I don't do 'surprised' anymore."

She sends him flying into the wall.

"What are you doing in my city, hunter?"

"Sight-seeing."

"We don't have many tourist attractions. Not anymore anyway. There were a couple fires I started."

"You have beautiful women, though."

"Like the two who went after your neck yesterday?"

"They had good taste, I'll give them that-"

------

He's had weird mornings, but this one rates somewhere in the top ten.

"They had good taste, I'll give them that-"

Another punch lands on his chest. He's seen her strength, she's just playing with him, and not even hiding it.

It's sort of insulting.

"None of them had your legs though," he croaks, breathless.

"Now that's true."

Suddenly she presses against him, pinning him to the wall.

"I like it when you tell me the truth," she adds before swallowing his next words.

They weren't going to be a protest.

------

She's going to fuck his brains out against that wall. She's still horny after last night. Her hands go straight for the fly, and he bites her lip, hard enough to draw blood. She takes a step back and licks the drops away.

"Look at that, kitty's got claws."

"Is that a Cleveland thing? Bestiality as local highest-rated pastime?"

"Cable here does suck. Stop trying to be witty and give me a happy, boy-toy."

------

It's the second time he gets called a baby animal in twelve hours and yet again, it's an insane-woman induced, life-threatening situation. He so should be getting out of here, and she's taken his cock out of his pants and _God_, her hands and coherent thought don't go together at all-

"I'm not going to do all the work here, you know."

"My name… is actually Dean."

"Well, fuck me, Dean."

------

"Are you going to kill me now?"

"Not right now."

"Good."

His bruises blossom purple, and when he sleeps he doesn't look like he's a fuck up like her. Faith knows he must be, though, to be in this job. She almost feels sorry for him.

She doesn't do _actual_ sorry anymore.

Seeing him all bloody and broken makes her horny again. She wakes him up.

If she were a regular kind of person, she'd be seeing a shrink about all this. But she's the Slayer, and if her darkness makes a better predator out of her, it's encouraged (as long as it's not demons she's fucking).

She sort of likes it better this way.

------

She doesn't tell him why she doesn't kill him. Maybe she's getting soft. Maybe it's just a flight of fancy. Maybe she's not an evil thing but a fighter, just like them. Except more deadly, and gorgeous.

"You look like shit, Dean."

Sammy's nose is buried in some ancient almanac yet again, and he only spares a glance at his brother.

"I saw Hellmouth and live to tell the tale, nerd. What did you do this weekend?"

Now this earns him Sam's undivided attention. Funny how his brother always knows when Dean's just pulling his leg, and when he's bragging about things he really did.

"Do you... do you have a death wish, Dean?! What were you thinking?"

Dean wears a shit-eating grin. One out of three, _check_.

Sam's shovel-like hands cover his face as he mumbles, "How did you even get out of there, you idiot?"

"Oh I dunno, Sammy. I just had... Faith, I guess."

_The end_


End file.
